Fallout 3 is one of my favourite games of all time. The open-world, post-apocalyptic nature appeals to me like no other. With the right narrative, Fallout has near-unlimited capabilities.
I admire when an established franchise adds innovation to their creations; taking risks is great, but Fallout 4 doesn't feel like it took many steps ahead at all. The new features are simply features that modders had created and implemented into previous titles years before.
That said, it isn't really broken yet new features that are my main issue with Fallout 4, it's the game's ridiculous narrative. Fallout 4 starts pre-war, with the player having a child and a partner: a happy yet simple life. That happiness is destroyed once the nukes begin to fall and the family must sprint towards the nearest vault in order to survive.
If you're not caught up with Fallout's lore: vaults were advertised as heavenly underground locations that protect its inhabitants from the threats above caused via nuclear war. Each vault is different, and is quite literally a place in which different experiments can take place. For example, there's a vault in which 999 of its inhabitants are female, and one male. Fallout 4's main vault tests how cryogenically freezing people affects them long-term. A mercenary breaks into the fault and kidnaps your child and kills everyone else, but coincidentally not you.
Waking up and leaving this strange vault years later, our protagonist doesn't really seem to care about what they just walked out of and is now seeing: a literal wasteland, void of most life. Surely you'd question that, right? Nope. Our protagonist is forever crying about the location of their baby. Regardless of how many characters that you encounter, never do we seem to care about them and their struggles for survival. Every single thing you do for them is strictly to get them to help you find your child. Forget empathy.
THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS A LARGE SPOILER. SCROLL TO THE NEXT ONE TO AVOID IT.
Fallout 4 is literally about finding your child amidst the chaos, although you never seem to show that you care about the chaos. In the end, the biggest threat to everyone has been, well, your son?! But, wait, you have to choose between killing them and halting their evil plans or saving them and allowing them to kill everyone else?! Who wrote this? This is terrible.
SPOILER OVER. DON'T LOOK UP, AS MUCH AS YOU WANT TO.
Visually, Fallout 4 can be beautiful, depending on the hardware you are running it on. I honestly wouldn't bother with a console if you want aesthetics; the render distance won't be great and the foliage will look terrible from a distance. Pop-ins of textures and such will be noticeable. Goddamn I wish Bethesda would just use a different engine already. It's too dated, it's forever buggy. It's awful.
The magic of Fallout is still there, though. It's still fun with its levels of exploration and the customisation and crafting of clothing, weapons, buildings and communities. It's a nice additional touch to the game that was long desired by fans. It's a positive touch in the right direction for the franchise. One of my favourite additions is the weather: rain, radioactive storms in which you must take shelter from, thunder and changes to the environment. It makes the game a little more realistic and the world feeling just that extra bit more threatening, as it should.
Overall, I recommend Fallout 4 if you're picking it up during a sale. It's not a bad game, it's just a bad story.